Everywhere I traveled in Poland, I encountered a reverence for God and Christ, a faithfulness to the teachings of the Catholic Church, that superseded any excessively nationalistic spirit and love of country.

Robert Hugh Benson’s The Religion of the Plain Man is a concise, thoughtful, gracious, persuasive, and beautifully written account of a convert’s journey and the reasons why one might wish to enter into communion with the Catholic Church.

In these two hymn, readers will meet a poet who, though he may not be exactly easy, presents images of beauty and, in his own words, “terror” that are the very stuff of the Christian walk that Eliot himself began in 1927.

Reading good poetry, Pearce writes, can prevent us from wasting time in activities such as watching television, noodling on the web, or indulging in social media. Such activities, he argues, can dull the mind and transform us into narcissistic, prideful, and self-centered persons.